


Through Tired Eyes

by chasing_the_sterek



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Apologies, Background Dean/Cas, Braids, Domestic Fluff, Flower Braids, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gabriel Monthly Challenge, I mean frankly Dean and Cas are just relationship goals, I wrote this at 3am so apologies if it sucks, Insomnia, Insomniac Sam, January Gabriel Monthly Challenge, M/M, Protective Gabriel, Research, Sam thinks Gabriel's a hallucination, What Was I Thinking?, Why Did I Write This?, also all the domestic tags are not for sabriel, and domestic???, anyway, i have a theory that sam just stole all of the research i had to do, i just wanted to jump on the monthly challenge bandwagon, i kind of want to write a companion fic based on the way i wrote them here, it probably does, seriously i only had to do shockingly little, sue me, they are for destiel, they're so happy in this fic???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-26
Updated: 2017-01-26
Packaged: 2018-09-20 02:23:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9471227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chasing_the_sterek/pseuds/chasing_the_sterek
Summary: "I can't believe he went to bed independently like a normal human being," Dean says.Sam squints his eyes further shut in the faint and fruitless hope that it's going to block out the noise. He can't be bothered to lift his arms to do it the traditional way - he's too comfortable, too warm, limbs heavy like lead and eyelids in a similar state."I am more concerned with the fact that his hair is in flowery braids, Dean," Cas says.///Gabriel, as it turns out, does not exactly approve of six-day research binges, especially when there isn't really any sort of deadline.





	

**Author's Note:**

> There are probably a lot of things in this that are inconsistent or just not explained, which is why I still feel iffy about this whole fic. I have tried to go back through and improve it, don't get me wrong, but all the exposition-y stuff felt really forced no matter where or how I put it in. I might as well stick it here, then, right?
> 
> Sam's avoiding sleep because of his nightmares about both good ol' Luci-babes and his time spent in the Cage. He's buried himself in researching a case the cover it but doesn't actually get anywhere because he's so goddamn exhausted. Like, seriously, when I was writing it I was imagining him just going to the exact same website for a week solid and never even realising he accidentally memorised it.
> 
> Gabriel is miraculously Not Dead, having created not one illusion while fighting Lucifer but many; he probably learnt/developed a few badass tricks during his time as Loki and the Trickster, so maybe he pulled a kind of Horcrux-type move and hid multiple illusions around the hotel. Don't try and convince me he'd just try and win using a cheap kid's trick like the writers did. I didn't believe them then and I won't believe you now. Case in point: He is an archangel, a pagan god, and a Trickster, all at the same time. And if you were to continue along the vein of him being a coward, then surely a coward would choose the fighting method that's most likely to get them out of it okay, regardless of style points or symmetry or whatever? I need to stop talking about this before I go on a huge rant about it, but you get the point. (If you actually read through all of this paragraph then you have an immeasurably better attention span than me, so ten points to your Hogwarts house.)
> 
> I seriously hope this isn't perceived to be as horrific as I think it is. Fingers crossed.

Sam looks up from his research idly as a soft rustle of feathers overrides the sounds of his laptop keys. He's expecting Cas, probably yet again attempting to get him to bed, despite four days of nothing, but he gets something else entirely. Some _one_ else entirely.

Gabriel waves. False cheer decorates the movement, forced but easy, like the archangel is used to doing it around people who aren't quite so adept at reading both body language and tells. Hesitance drips from the movement like honey, and Sam's eyes follow it like his gaze is stuck there. "Hello, Sam."

Sam tears his eyes away from the sad, lonely ghost of the wave and shoots Gabriel a brief smile in return. He doesn't want to upset the guy, even if he _is_ just a hallucination. "Hey, Gabe."

Gabriel frowns. Sam sees it in his peripherals as he reunites his attention and the laptop screen. "What, no fanfare? No screaming, no falling off of chairs? No crouching at my feet, hugging, crying, and/or making noises about how much you missed me and thought I was dead? Just a smile and a _'hey, Gabe'?"_

Sam rolls his eyes at his article on pixies. "I haven't slept in a while. Besides, screaming and falling out of chairs isn't a good reaction to give if you're a hunter - would you prefer I pulled a gun on you?"

"Rock salt won't work on me," Gabe corrects automatically. "Archangel. How long is a while?"

Sam wrinkles his nose. "What does that have to do with guns?"

He catches the tail end of an eye roll when he looks up. Gabe now has his hands in his pockets, leaning against a bookshelf. "I meant, how long has it been since you slept?"

Sam aborts the nose-wrinkling in favour of a frown. "What does that have to do with _anything?"_ He amends with honest confusion.

Gabriel takes a handful of steps forwards, then slowly reaches out and shuts Sam's laptop with one finger. "Just give me a rough estimate," he says, eyes suddenly semi-serious and kind of dark.

Sam slumps back in his chair a little, admittedly avoiding Gabriel's eyes. "A couple of days. Maybe three, maybe four. Cas hasn't been in and nagged at me in a while, so I don't know for sure."

Gabe's expression slips from serious to incredulous in about zero point three seconds. "A couple of _days?_ Kid, I'm not even human and I know that's bad for you."

Sam frowns at him again. Who knew hallucinations were as naggy as Cas? (And, on a side note that ran the risk of becoming a full-blown tangent, who knew Cas was as naggy as Dean?)

"It's not the worst I've had."

Gabriel's face darkens again, this time in anger. Long gone is even the fragile façade of cheer, lost to concern and distress and a few threads of suspicion.

He lifts a hand, as if to snap his fingers, but Sam levels him with a look. "What are you gonna do? Mojo me to sleep? Isn't that a little difficult when you're a hallucination?"

Apparently his and Gabriel's faces switched around when he wasn't looking - Sam sees a semi-confused frown marring the angel's face, feels his own face darkening with frustration.

"I'm not -"

"Don't try that," Sam mutters. He turns back to his laptop dismissively, tries to open it but can't get past a centimetre and a half without it feeling like someone's holding it down.

When he looks up to berate Gabriel, he's gone.

\--

Day six of The Great Research Binge, Sam doesn't hear the flap of wings behind him, too caught up in a promising article on nymphs' protective and possessive behaviour patterns to be on alert for it. It doesn't help that he's just kicked Dean out of the library after being told to go to bed for the millionth time, so he's not expecting Cas to drop in at any moment.

Fingers run through his hair carefully, and in the span of a heartbeat he's got a knife in the stomach of the creature behind him and another one halfway to its chest.

His arm is caught in a hand that's smaller than his but holds unnatural power within it, and there's a half-surprised laugh from behind him.

"Well, kiddo," Gabriel says, "I guess I really shouldn't expect a big bad hunter like you to screech like a banshee and fall over if I make you jump, huh?"

"Oh my god," Sam blurts, spinning around to stare at the knife embedded in the archangel's intestines. "I am so sorry. I'll go get a, uh, a first ai-"

Gabriel plucks the knife out and drops it wordlessly onto the table.

There's a pause.

"Oh," Sam says lamely.

Gabe snorts. "C'mon, kid. You'd have remembered about the whole angel-healing thing if you'd been more awake. And you'd have had three knives in me, not one and a half. To bed with you."

And, well.

Sam just got accidentally stabbed him, so he might as well lay down on his mattress for half an hour to humour him.

"Alright," Sam mutters, already resolving to wait exactly thirty minutes before calling it quits. He sways when he gets up, lightheaded, and belatedly remembers that he hasn't eaten anything but half a small packet of fries in six days. He grimaces at nothing, tells himself to walk it off, and sets off out of the library. Gabriel trots after him like he half-expects him to collapse at any moment.

"So what's spurring this study sesh, Sammich?" Gabe asks when they're not even halfway down the hallway.

"Couple of girls got taken, a couple towns over. Sisters. Twelve and eight. No trace of anything supernatural."

"It's not your problem, then, right?" Gabriel says happily.

"No trace of anything human either," Sam adds. He slows as they reach his door. "Gotta be in our ballpark."

Gabe sighs against his back as Sam puts one hand on the handle and twists it. "Have you ever considered that maybe, _just maybe,_ you could just shoot an email to another hunter? Send them all the deets, hand over the reins?"

Sam casts an amused look down at the archangel. "And what would I do in the meantime? Get another case?"

 _"No._ Relax. Eat. Sleep. Read, if you have to. You know, normal, necessary human things -"

"You're not human," Sam informs him.

Gabriel folds his arms over his chest. "I don't have to be. I'm the Messenger, remember? And right now, the Messenger is telling you to go to fucking sleep."

"The Messenger is just a hallucination, and seriously needs to learn to shut up and stop using third person," Sam murmurs, glancing at the clock to mark the start of his thirty minutes of boredom. "And I don't see the big guy not-so upstairs ever giving a damn."

"One day you and I are gonna wake up and be alright, Samsquatch," he says softly. "Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but one day, I promise you."

Sam just kind of stares at him. What he hell is he supposed to say to that, anyway? _"Thanks, buddy, as a hallucination I'm sure you can see millennia into the future so I believe you 100%"?_

Gabriel rolls his eyes, pushing off the wall and making his way over to sit on the bed near Sam's head, changing the subject smoothly. "You want me to play with your hair, you grump?"

"No," Sam says firmly, but he still ends up falling asleep with fingers in his hair and a hum in his ears from someone's else's lips.

\--

"I can't believe he went to bed independently like a normal human being," Dean says.

Sam squints his eyes further shut in the faint and fruitless hope that it's going to block out the noise. He can't be bothered to lift his arms to do it the traditional way - he's too comfortable, too warm, limbs heavy like lead and eyelids in a similar state.

"I am more concerned with the fact that his hair is in flowery braids, Dean," Cas says.

Sam frowns. Flowers? Braids? Not exactly his style, even sleep-deprived, and definitely not what he remembers going to sleep with.

He can _feel_ Dean squinting in the dim lighting. There's a shuffle, then a brief "Do you think he would wake up if I -"

"No, Dean," Cas says firmly.

Dean sighs, and the feeling of intense scrutiny returns. There's nearly a full minute of silence as he squints, then: "Oh, yeah. Didn't see those. Well, I guess they're a bit confusing, but hey, they're pretty. Go Sam."

Sam rolls his eyes, but he's still a little too groggy to move enough to speak.

"Dean," Cas reprimands again.

"What are you gonna do, Cas? Sit on me and lecture me about sibling respect?"

There's a shuffle of footsteps, like Cas took a threatening step forwards and Dean took about three surprised ones backwards in quick succession, and a brief snippet of laughter from Dean before he quiets himself in a fruitless attempt to not wake Sam.

Don't get him wrong - he's pleased for them. God knew they both needed each other, and that Sam has needed the contact staring to be acknowledged _somehow._ They'd come to their senses a could if months before. When you least expect it sometimes you get saved, he guesses. But their domesticity makes him feel lonely sometimes.

Footsteps retreat, fading away, and Sam falls asleep again.

\--

"The Force awakens!" Dean whoops when Sam shuffles into the kitchen the next morning. "Thought you were never gonna leave your pit, man. I was gonna check on your corpse."

Sam shoots him a grumpy expression before turning to the coffee machine. "A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack," he quotes.

Dean laughs, but Cas furrows his eyebrows in confusion. "I do not see what this Force and the speaker's morals concerning it have to do with Sam's sleep cycle."

Dean half-rolls his eyes. "Sammy's using it as a metaphor for sarcastic comments, buddy. Sayin' that they should be used for defense, not attack. It's a Star Wars quote."

"That is hypocritical," Cas tells Sam. "You, similarly, use sarcastic quips against your brother."

Sam groans, mutters "It's too early for this conversation", and inhales his entire mugful of black coffee in one go.

Dean snorts. "It's nearly eleven, dude. Not exactly one in the morning."

Sam feels his eyes bug out, and he freezes, staring past the rim of his cup at the ceiling.

Eleven.

It's _eleven._ In the _afternoon._

"Shit," he says slowly, lowering his dreg-filled mug from his lips and placing it on the counter carefully before bolting off to the library.

"I guess you won't be wanting bacon, then," Dean says, snorting and turning back to the pan.

\--

He's halfway through an article on autumn witches when he hears a flap and a rustle of feathers from behind him.

Sam heaves a sigh as he turns around. "Cas, I swear you're supposed to be in the kitchen with. . ."

Gabriel smirks at him.

". . . Dean," he finishes lamely. He's distantly aware he's staring, mouth probably gaping open like a lunatic, but it's just - he didn't - "Gabriel?"

The amused tilt to Gabriel's mouth deepens, but softens, becoming more like a lopsided grin. "Hey, kiddo. Guess who wasn't a hallucination?"

Sam opens and closes his mouth for a moment. He transfers his wide-eyed stare to the table. "Fuck."

He remembers the braids - particularly the way each flower had been so intricately inserted into his hair he'd begrudgingly admitted it could be considered more of a work of art than a hairstyle. He'd taken photos then promptly dissolved into cursing as he realised just how long this was going to take - and the hair-playing and feels his expression do a weird grimace-flush thing he can't quite explain.

 _"Fuck,"_ he repeats again, this time with feeling.

Gabriel laughs.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Congratulations on clawing your way to the end. I would shake your hand but unfortunately I don't have the ability to reach through a screen.
> 
> Shout if you think a companion fic from Dean's point of view would be good - it'd probably be so fluffy it'd give your cavities cavities but it'd definitely feature something kind of akin to an extended ending for this. As in, it'd have events after the last scene.
> 
> Adios!


End file.
